Fueling the inspiration

I'm set to fly out to SoCal on Monday to spend quality time with friends and I have a checklist of things I want to do while I'm out there (mostly to do with places to eat). I also have a few self-assignments to do while I'm out there and I wanted to get a little inspiration before I went. I checked out this great exhibit at the Columbia Museum of Art, "Who Shot Rock & Roll":

There were great live shots, great styled shots, and great videos. One of my favorites was the shot of the band "Kiss" in full make-up and suits on a New York City street. It became the cover of their album, "Dressed to Kill". I plan on going back again to absorb stuff I missed.

And serendipitously, I spied this window display in a shop around the corner from the museum:

Anyone else loving that green coat and hat ensemble?

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice, practice, practice.

Apparently it's the same answer to getting into the County Honors Orchestra. Tip of the cap to the girl for trying out and earning First Chair, Viola, in the middle school County Honors Orchestra. Not only did she best her fellow 6th graders but also 7th and 8th graders. Tomorrow they have an all-day practice and then a performance on Saturday. Very proud of her.

Even Opa and Oma sent a card congratulating her:

And tip of the cap to Nana for embellishing the card she sent:

So glad this paid off:

This...less so:

It went by too soon

My sweet baby nephew's visit came and went so fast, it was like a blur. Still wondering if I kissed these sweet cheeks enough:

Or if I took enough selfies with him:

P.S. I love these whale footy pajamas on his so much. I told my sister that I'll probably need him to wear a version of this until he's an adult. Come on Augie, time to wear the whales for Auntie Frances!

We managed to squeeze in some "skoogie boarding" (yes that's a boogie board on top of a skateboard) and Velina managed to beat Augie's dad in every race:


Velina also got to hold the cutie a number of times--man I love this baby in hoodies!

We got to give this sweetie a bath:

And of course, we ate. Like the #3 Big Pig BBQ platter enjoyed by Augie's dad:

And the oyster shooters we tried with a Bud chaser:

And the grits with sea bass and collard greens:

And a little pubbing. Here's my wheat beer sampler--that's Hoegaarden, Spaten Franziskaner, Blue Moon, Allagash White, and Weihenstephaner, clockwise from the top right (BTW, my new favorite is the Hoegaarden):

And dessert was had as well--this is my cinnamon ice cream. Man it must be forever since I've had straight up ice cream because this was sooo good:

And since there is no Sonic in NYC and it is one of Velina's favorite places, we picked up some shakes (Cherry Lime Cooler and Vanilla Malted) from there as well one night.

Unfortunately, the weather cooled down (and even rained--gaaaah!) so we didn't get to hang on the porch that much, though I would take the baby out for a short spells:

Because he was somewhat hypnotized by the lights:

And it was also our lucky weekend. Augie's dad bought a few of these scratchers and mine won a $1:

Which only added to our gambling hubris (he's won his fantasy football league twice and I've won the overall in my football pool twice), so who knows what might be worth gambling on next...

Sigh, anyhoo, they left yesterday and the house seems so quiet. Until next time, Augie...

And don't forget to wear the whale outfit!

Porch Redo

Another area I wanted to spruce up before my sister and her family's arrival was the back porch. They love being in the fresh air and since it's been getting milder here, I thought it'd be nice to have an area where we could enjoy beverages and some snacks:


Previously, we had been using the back porch just as a convenient place to bring out the trash and put out recyclables.


Though I spent about $35 investing in the artificial grass rug, a few cans of spray paint, and a couple of Dollar Store LED-lit paper lanterns, I really wanted to use what I had on hand. I used folding chairs and an old folding table we had as well as icicle lights.


I attempted to spruce up the folding table with some color. I have dubbed this table "The Learning Experience". I had tried different spray paints (e.g., one for plastic since there is a laminate on the table) and realized that some reacted unevenly with each other and the surface. Also, I learned a couple of lessons the hard way about using hand-made stencils. Anyhoo, it'll do for now:


Also the girl had this faded blue paper lamp that I spray painted in Chrome to make it pop against the paper lanterns:


It all came together quickly and fairly painlessly and I was pleased with the simple redo. To summarize, here is Before:


Here is After:


And here is After-Dark:


I stuffed some icicles inside the chrome star paper lamp. And since the green paper lanterns' LED lights didn't work, I stuffed a few icicles inside of one as well. Who would have thought there would be such shoddy workmanship from the Dollar Store?


The girl liked it a lot--she said she looks forward to hanging out there with food and friends.


Hope my sister's family enjoys it!

Spare Room to Hotel Room

In my journey to make the spare room an amenable guest room, I had a few breakdowns along the way. Ever watch "Hoarders" and they inevitably hit some point where the hoarder breaks down and cries and then justifies/Charlie Sheens it? God dammit, this is my life and you people just don't understand! I don't have a problem, I'm winning, dammit! What?! Yes I'm high. The drug is Frances and I'd tap out a line for you but it's too darn potent! Or something like that. Anyhoo, I kind of hit that point a number of times where I had to take a break and walk away and reassess the next day. But in the end I was able to get a lot done condensing like items together and labeling nearly everything. The hard part was taking a harder look at stuff I don't/won't use. Eventually I had a pile of empty containers where I planned to put the bed:

But remember how the furniture store slated delivery for the day of my sister's arrival and I joked that nothing could go wrong with that? Well, of course, I get a call yesterday and they say the truck isn't going to make it till Saturday. They offer me two options: they'd give me the Queen size version (I had ordered a Full size) of the same model I ordered for the same price and deliver it since they have it in stock or they'd give me another model in Full size and then replace it with the model I ordered on Saturday. In the end I went with the Queen size option, but it meant rearranging and making more room for the bigger bed. But it got done! (You can check out the "Before" in this post.) Wha-la!

The bookcases are all on one side:

I cleared the table and I can now close the closet doors.

I moved out the record albums (of which I ended up donating a third of them) and put the labeled supplies that I use less often in the closet for now. I did allow myself one "panic box" of miscellaneous items that I didn't have a place for yet and I will sort out later.

Overall, I'm very pleased and the girl even said it looked like a hotel! Perhaps because it's got a tv in there now?

With a hospitality card listing my guests' favorite channels?

Or is it the little welcome basket?

Can't wait until my sister's family arrives!

Went to get a haircut

I went to a recommended haircutter and I went through my usual spiel of "needing a haircut that flatters", as I circle my big face with my hand, "this, because my face is"--

"--round. Uh-Huh," he interjected dryly.

Anyhoo, he went with choppy bangs and thinning out the length. This is what it looked like afterwards (...in my car in the parking lot):

And you can see, how flat and smooth my hair can be with professional hair-styling hands:

Unfortunately, in my unskilled, lazy hands, much less so:

Maybe it's time for the China Chop after all.

Getting closer to ready

Well the spare room/guest room is going a bit slower than expected despite tremendous efforts on my part. So I took a break from to focus on another aspect of preparing for my sister's family's visit: getting a good microbrew beer for my BIL. I checked out the decent selection of microbrews at Green's:

I considered going with Session Black that was so tasty at El Cobre but I know my BIL prefers it in cold weather and it's been warming up here (already!). Also he mentioned that trying a brew made in SoCar would be interesting. So it narrowed it down to Spartanburg's RJ Rockers. And then considering he's a diehard New England fan, this one just called out:

Ah, that's one thing taken care of for their visit. Counting down to their arrival in 2 days!